The SPCA also posted a Flickr slideshow of photos from the scene on its website.

ORIGINAL: This morning and afternoon, the SPCA of Texas seized about 178 animals from a rural Hunt County property.

Rabbits. Guinea fowl. Puppies. Cats. Piglets. Dozens of chicks and chickens and roosters. Some in cages and sheds. Some walking around freely. Feces strewn about inside the cages. Food and opaque greenish water in rusted-out tin cans and bowls.

At least one chicken was dead. Its head could be seen between old spare tires and shovels on one side, and a shed wall made of chicken wire and scrap metal on the other.

Clayton Lawrence, 75, was breeding the animals and selling them at the flea market to supplement his fixed income. Chickens went for about $10. Rabbits and guinea fowl sold for about $10-20. Dogs cost $50-$100. Lawrence didn’t want to take care of cats, but he said somebody left them with him at a flea market trip.

Lately, business hasn’t been good. And Lawrence said he’s had health problems that limit his mobility, and has had to pay a man he knows $10 every other day to feed all of his animals. He didn’t know how many animals he owned.

He relinquished the animals and won’t fight the seizure in court. But he wasn’t happy with the SPCA and the constable showing up again after warnings and investigations. “I don’t know of a dang thing I can do about it,” he said.

SPCA Senior Investigator Art Munoz draws out four puppies from a cage on Wednesday. (Tristan Hallman/Staff)

“They ought to give me a chance,” he said. “We’re trying to get this thing cleaned up and straightened up out here.”

Those efforts included a controlled burn of a pile of trash that had been strewn about his cluttered property.

Lawrence said that feed and care for all the animals cost him about $600 a month. That ate up almost his entire Social Security income.

“I don’t know how I’m going to make a go of it,” he said.

Lawrence sat with four friends — one of whom was shirtless and chomping a cigar — on buckets and metal folding chairs while some 15 SPCA workers put all the animals in kennels.

Grady, the investigator, said that Lawrence’s mentality represented a common cultural issue: people who grew up around farms tend to feed animals before they feed themselves.

The animals will go to the SPCA’s 35-acre shelter in McKinney. Some might end up in the Dallas shelter as well.

As for Lawrence? While he cracked some jokes and flashed his nearly toothless grin, he said he’s worried about how he’ll scrape by. At one point, he asked the SPCA if they’d be helping him with his groceries now that they’ve taken his animals away.

“Sometimes you’ll get in these situations where both the animals and the people need help,” said SPCA spokeswoman Maura Davies.